Australia fight back after ‘brainless’ England fall short

The stakes of these Ashes have been diminishing since their 11th day, when custody of the urn was decided. With ten minutes to lunch today, the cricket reached the level of bald men fighting over a comb.

For the 75th over of England’s innings, Steve Smith tossed the ball to Marnus Labuschagne – a win for pester power if ever there was. Time was when Labuschagne bowled passable leggies that occasionally took crucial wickets; now he bowls parabolic dross landing closer to his own feet than the batters’; Smith was no more than killing time with four overs to the second new ball. Labuschagne’s first four deliveries to Joe Root and Jamie Smith were all duly short, pointlessly, the last called wide as it comfortably cleared Smith’s head.

Earlier Smith had shovelled a half volley from Cameron Green to short cover, only to be posthumously reprieved by a no ball – a piquant moment, it seemed, for two young cricketers who have struggled to impact on this summer, turning on a millimetre. Smith appeared to have been gifted a chance of partial redress, as Green’s torment worsened. But gifts have been treated frivolously these Ashes, and so it proved again – squirming inside the line to biff over the off, Smith corkscrewed another short ball to deep cover. Labuschagne’s celebration? Well, it’s probably still going on.

These things happen, of course. Such a miscue from a premeditated shot would pass unremarked in a T20 match, swallowed up in the waves of chaos; still, in the context of the Ashes, it would not so long ago have seemed inconceivable. “Test cricket,” said Don Bradman solemnly, “is not a light-hearted business, especially that between England and Australia.” A good deal of the cricket in the last six weeks, and especially in the last two, has been if not light-hearted at least light-headed. Smith’s shot fell into the mescaline-while-listening-to-Jefferson-Airplane category.

Smith had added 94 with Root, on a blameless pitch beneath an azure sky. He had hooked Mitchell Starc for six, driven him back over his head, and absorbed a corresponding helmet blow; a shot off Scott Boland through mid-wicket pinged like a pinball from a flipper. But at the point of Labuschagne’s introduction, the English pair stood between the new ball and the tail, between 350 and 500.

A common admonition in T20 is: you have more time than you think. It is truer still in Test cricket. Challenges change and scenarios evolve, but there is opportunity to appraise and adjust. What was Smith thinking? We know, at any rate, what he was not thinking: he was not thinking about probably the Test’s best batting conditions being round the corner, of the chance to escort Root to a Test seventh double century and England to a total nearly unassailable given evidence of wear and inconsistent bounce. He had certainly learned nothing from his shanking a similar pull shot off Starc at Adelaide Oval while attempting to club a fifth consecutive boundary.

It might seem unfair to harp on Smith’s dismissal after a day in which Root compiled 160 – an exposition of endurance orthodoxy, after which he spent time off the field with a bad back. But the former, cricket fundamentally out of place in elite company, has lately been more in the character of this series, and so it went. Like Smith, Ben Duckett arrived here a three-format fixture for England; like Smith, he has marched backward in the most important of these. Jake Weatherald’s skittish start should have been curtailed early today, exposing the under-pressure Labuschagne, but Duckett dropped an elementary catch at mid-wicket to the ground. Ben Stokes had to step in and tighten his bowlers’ leaky beginning. By the time Labuschagne came to the crease, Australia were on solid footing.

After the consistency they attained in Melbourne, in fact, England’s ragged old ways resumed, Matthew Potts in particular struggling with the step up from the nets, and only Stokes able to exercise any degree of control. Overprepared? Underadvised? Whatever the case, the perfect batter in the circumstances was Travis Head, who has made more runs this summer than Smith, Labuschagne and Usman Khawaja put together, going from Perth’s lightsome gamble to a gold coin stamped In Trav We Trust. His cut has always been dead-eyed – he hit eleven boundaries between third man and cover point. His defence, however, has looked increasingly solid.

Australia pilfered twenty-six boundaries from their first thirty overs – an extraordinary rate of progress. A word, by contrast, to Boland and Michael Neser, who as Starc’s auxiliaries bent their backs, bashed their lengths, and gave even Root no peace. Root succumbed at last to a limber return catch by Neser, darting to his right to intercept a top edge – the bowler’s third caught and bowled of the series. Doggedly, unobtrusively, Boland and Neser have maintained their standards this summer. But there have become too many counterexamples.

Photograph by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images